As known in the art, due to the recent development of information and communication techniques, information providing technique, in which information for various fields is provided in real time to many subscribers through one or more host servers, has been actively developed, using a remote data communication network.
Based on these techniques, cache memory extension technique for more quickly providing the subscribers with accurate information, and the information selection and compression techniques that are more conveniently accessible are being developed to be compatible with the peripheral techniques and to satisfy subscriber tastes and preferences. Also, development of various contents and solutions thereof through these techniques has been actively progressed.
As information and communication including Internet are activated, online membership subscription for online transaction is actively progressed. Companies collect online personal information of online membership subscription to use in their marketing or share it with their subsidiaries or affiliated enterprises for marketing.
Therefore, various kinds of marketing information are provided in a targeting method for access to the user. In practice, a lot of advertising information is sent by affiliated companies to the sites even if they are not the site to which the user has subscribed as a member. Therefore, it has a negative effect on marketing since the user recognizes the information as spam and thinks his personal information was leaked.
Further, in reality a lot of personal information of user is being used unjustly.
The reason is that companies reuse the personal information collected by them too widely. In addition, since a very little effort is made for prevention of personal information leakage, the personal information leakage accidents are occurring frequently though not intended by the companies.
Once a personal information leakage incident occurred, the relevant company will lose a lot of credibility. Especially, if personal information is leaked from a shopping mall, the damage becomes greater since even all sorts of payment information will leak as well.
Therefore, recently the user is reluctant to subscribe membership to the website that requires personal information. If a user newly joins a site that requires personal information inevitably, the user would fill in wrong information intentionally. Therefore, it is difficult for the company to perform correct marketing for the customer.
Meanwhile, if a user had his personal information changed, it is not really necessary for him to provide the changed personal information to the company for which he already has a membership, thereby the marketing effect will be low for the company due to inaccurate information.
Further, for various reasons such as age, social status and family situation, the items of personal information that are thought important by the user could be different from user to user. However, items of personal information required for membership are very standardized, thus there is a problem that the user is not allowed to choose only some items preferred by him.
Meanwhile, the personal information provided by a user to a company is stored in a DB server of another company that separately manages only personal information or stored in the server of that company on a large scale all together with all the other users. Therefore, once the security of the relevant server was broken, it inevitably makes another problem of a large scale leaking of personal information.
On the other hand, marketing can still be carried out even if personal information of members indispensable for the business marketing is restrictive and the content is not specific. However, indiscriminate collection of massive and unnecessarily specific information leads to another problem.
Meanwhile, if companies obtain more specific personal information, for example, purchase information of user, and utilize it directly in marketing, marketing effects will be greatly increase. However, since purchase information of user is a very sensitive item, they hesitate to open their information. Therefore, more effective marketing may not be accomplished.